Beloved
by naqaashi
Summary: One hundred ways to love each other - 100 prompts, 100 premises, 100 stories about Date Masamune, Sanada Yukimura, and the love they share. This fic is meant to be read alongside lyrainthedark's story "Loved."
1. An Eye for Another

**Disclaimer: I don't own Sengoku Basara or its characters.**

**A/N: My braintwin, **lyrainthedark **and I came up with the idea to write complementary Sengoku Basara stories. We are using 100 prompts from the Livejournal community Fanfic100.**

To that end, we will write two collections of stories. Hers is called

Loved** while mine is called **Beloved. **Our collections will feature 100 standalone drabbles/one-shots each. Each individual**** chapter in these collections will have a common theme/premise and prompt, with the chapter itself being our interpretation of that prompt and theme. **

**We will update at the same time. To properly enjoy our stories, please read both of them together!**

Also, Date's Engrish is indicated in **bold**, and thoughts and stream of consciousness in _italics._

**Prompt: **Beginnings

**Premise: **Yukimura loses an eye

* * *

><p>Nothing.<p>

And the next day, nothing.

And the day after, nothing.

And a week from then, nothing.

Date Masamune glared at the obscenely empty horizon with a baleful blue-grey eye, wind stinging his tear ducts and blurring his vision. Then he trudged home, flung off his armour and swords, and crawled into his futon to glare at the ceiling till exhaustion shut his eye.

But not before he had exhausted every sneering variation of the word "coward" listed in his pet dictionary. In English _and_ Japanese.

Because really, the One-Eyed Dragon had expected the Tiger Cub of Kai to be far more mettlesome than he was proving. Masamune didn't appreciate a challenge that was thrown in his face, and retracted as soon as he turned the heat on.

A tiny sliver of perspective, wedged between Fight-Fight-Fight and Sanada-Sanada-Sanada in his brain, chose to announce its presence with an uncomfortable wriggle and distinctly pointy voice that muttered, "You went too far this time, Dokuganryu."

He shifted, rolling onto his sighted side, trapping himself in darkness as the pillow obscured his field of vision. _Perhaps I did_, he whispered back to the Kojuurou in his head. _But what of it? _

"You have ruined the boy's life," the voice poked back.

_Bah. Happened to me. I dealt. He'll deal too._

"It appears that he is _not_, else you would have twin spears carving out your throat this moment."

_**Damned**__ red coward._

The voice – though it was just a disembodied voice – rolled its eyes at him and retreated into silence.

_Oi! _Nothing answered. Masamune tried again, a little desperately, _Oi! What're you getting at? I didn't...__**damn it to hell!**__ I didn't ruin his life._

The chilly quiet in his head was a sharp accusation, a demand and a claw in his missing eye. He clapped a hand to the mangled eyelid, pressing down and rubbing to alleviate the phantom pain, wincing when the motion simply pressed his fingers into the empty space in his socket, scratching against the scarred skin within.

"**Shit!"** Gasping in pain, Masamune dragged himself upright and rushed to the water bowl, dunking his head in the cool liquid.

It had never hurt like _that_ for years, the young lord of Oushuu thought, panicking. It had not hurt _at all_ since the eye had been ripped out and the wound healed over. So why now, he wondered, water dribbling into his ears and clogging his nose as his mouth opened to release a stream of bubbles into the liquid.

_Is this the price to pay for my...crime?_

He pulled out of the bowl, water plastering his hair to his face, dripping down the lapels of his sleeping yukata. _**Impossible.**_

He had committed no crime. The fatalities of war were _never_ crimes. Not on the battlefield – and that was what it had been.

A battle.

And yet...the stillness around grew warmer, angrier.

Masamune cursed and began to dress, the road to Kai etched in his mind.

* * *

><p>Sanada Yukimura was having a quiet day.<p>

He could not recall when he had last enjoyed the idyll of a life with days pebbling into one another, round and smooth without disruptions to disturb their tranquility.

He eyed the twin spears of his trade, stacked neatly in a corner of his room, and turned his back on them with a pained shrug.

No one had ever said that peace came without a price. Not that this was the sort of peace he had fought and lost soldiers for. This was simply a punctuation mark, a brief blockade in his otherwise frenetic life, and he was taking the experience much as he handled everything else – a lesson to be learned and carved into memory.

So far, the young tiger of Kai had managed to learn that he was capable of exuding quietude and behaving with reserved dignity. _Almost like a man_, he mused with a flash of fierce pride, counting the days since Sasuke had last scratched his cheek with an exasperated "My, My!" at the loudly brutal antics of Yukimura and his lord.

About ten days, the youth calculated. That was when the fire had been torn from him, torn by the rough hands of Date Masamune, who had yet to show his face and compensate Yukimura for the disgrace visited upon him. The tiger cub twitched the folds of his brown hakama to align more neatly, a little irritated at the never ending task. But it couldn't be helped, since he was unable to take more than fifteen steps in any direction before falling on his face.

The _left_ side of his face.

The blind side.

The side that now felt the soft touch of calloused fingertips, tracing the bandage that held the wound closed.

Yukimura whirled at the caress, stumbling and keeling over into the firm arms of a blue-clad samurai.

"Date Masamune!" the startled warrior exclaimed, softly enough for his voice to not carry on the summer air. Too late, he remembered his lack of armour and weaponry, his complete helplessness with Sasuke taking a break from acting as bodyguard.

Deciding to throw caution to the winds, Yukimura gave the fury bursting in his chest free reign, driving his fist into his rival's jaw with enough force to shove him to the ground. The sudden loss of support caused him to teeter dangerously towards his left, and a second later he had crashed on top of Masamune.

Which was all very convenient, the enraged young tiger decided. This way he didn't have to worry about falling every time he made a move. _The battlefield is even. _So he sat up, struggling with the other man before he managed to pin him down with his legs, ignoring the curses and heaves and hapless shoves Masamune directed at him, because he was too intent on mauling the Oushuu chief.

So intent, that he failed to notice the exact moment that Masamune stopped writhing, stopped defending himself from the crushing fists that rained on his face, chest and abdomen. The exact moment when a blow from his left hand dashed his rival's head into a rock, putting him into a dead faint.

Yukimura slammed blow after blow on the inert body of the man who had taken his left eye, unable to feel anything save the pent up rage and despair and helplessness he had been bottling under a calm veneer for the past ten days, and he did not stop till Sasuke returned from his mission and hauled him off a horrifyingly brutalised Masamune.

* * *

><p>In the end, they wound up sharing Yukimura's quarters. Takeda Shingen insisted on it with a heavy frown directed at Yukimura, no doubt in disapproval of his unrelenting beat down of a defenceless man.<p>

To add insult to the injury, the Tiger of Kai went a step further and declared that the Dokuganryu would be tended to by none other than his assailant, effectively trapping the two young men in close proximity. Yukimura accepted the punishment with humble grace, as he had always accepted such reprimands, and set about making his rival – _no, not my rival, my enemy - _more comfortable as he convalesced in unconsciousness. As the days passed, the bruises mottling Masamune's flesh grew lighter and the cracks in his bones began setting, but his eyes remained shut.

_Eye,_ Yukimura reminded himself, reaching out to poke the lid that concealed emptiness. _Will mine look the same when I take off these bandages? _

He thought it probably would. _We shall mirror each other. _The idea rose in his head from nowhere, no logical source that he could find, and he snatched his hand back from Masamune's face. Cradling it, Yukimura felt the burn of warm skin on his fingertip, the tingle of flesh that had once been raw and bloody. Curious, he wormed the same finger underneath the bandage on his face and touched his own empty eyelid.

_How strange...it really does feel the same. _

Emboldened by the lack of pain, Yukimura swiftly undid the white strips and unwound them from his head, feeling the brush of fresh air on his newly-healed missing left eye socket. Grabbing a spear from their slots in the wall, he blinked at his own reflection in the polished metal of its blade – the depressed left eyelid, the right wide open in amazement and grief.

_I look...like him._

He didn't, not really – but something about the mutilation on their faces was the same – something he struggled in vain to pin down, despite staring at his face and Masamune's all through the night, into daybreak, when he finally fell asleep in a sprawl over his patient's chest.

* * *

><p>Yukimura woke to an even breath stirring his hair, blowing it away from his forehead. Peering up in drowsy disorientation, he found a lone blue-grey eye looking at him steadily.<p>

"Dokuganryu...Date Masamune," he murmured, sitting up and adjusting his haori to cover his chest decently – parading shirtless in armour was one thing, but in the familiarity of his private rooms was quite another – "You are awake."

"I'll say. What'd you do to me, try and bludgeon me to death?"

Yukimura averted his eye in shame, telling himself that he deserved the sarcasm. Whatever Masamune's reason for taking his left eye, it was done in battle and a wound sustained thus ought not to spill over into an off-the-field grudge. "I...humbly apologise for my actions, Dokuganryu. I was overset, and in my -"

"-anger and hurt you couldn't be bothered to think about honour when it was easier to just turn me into a giant slice of meat instead. I get it, kid."

Yukimura lowered his head even more, face burning in humiliation at the calm acceptance in Masamune's voice and words. _Why are you being so kind? You did nothing wrong!_

As if his brief coma had left him with psychic abilities, Masamune quirked a ruthless smirk at his companion. "I committed a crime, Red. Took what I shouldn't have."

"No!" Yukimura felt compelled to protest, "It was simply a casualty of a fine battle, I should have been more competent with my-"

But Masamune wasn't having it. The need to confess, to spill his biggest nightmare and most secret dream was thrashing in his chest, demanding release. Swift, gratuitous release, so that it could stand between them.

"I wanted it. I wanted you to look – like me. Be like me...look like me. Be my-my equal. **You see?**"

_To break them..._

Yukimura eyed him uncomprehendingly. "You took my eye because you felt at a _disadvantage_ during our battles?"

Masamune gave an impatient snort. "As if! You couldn't hope to touch me on your best day and you know it, Sanada Yukimura!" Before the other could lose his temper, he rushed to add, "You look like me, you know."

And promptly snapped his mouth shut in horror at the abysmally _tender_ tone in which those words had escaped. _**Shit. Shit, damn, shit, shit. Damn. Hell. Shit!**_

But all the swear-praying in the world couldn't prevent comprehension from dawning in the wide brown eye of Sanada Yukimura, the eye which went impossibly wide as the implications of the tone worked into his brain and told him impossible things and knocked down the iron wall of romantic denial that he had wrapped himself in to remove himself from the awkwardness of dealing with the opposite sex.

Someone, Yukimura thought, dizzy with rushing blood and a thundering sense of _belonging_, should have warned him about the dangers of such familiarity coming from his own gender.

_Or bind them..._

And yet, the young warrior reflected as he imbibed the honesty and trepidation in a face that never presented anything but supreme confidence to him, if this had been Sasuke or Maeda Keiji or any other warrior of his acquaintance, his heart would not be pounding in his throat like it planned to run out of his body and right into the pitilessly possessive hands of Date Masamune.

The only thing left to decide then, was if he would let it. _He took my eye_, Yukimura reminded himself, unable to look past the transgression. _I have been crippled – perhaps hopelessly. _

But he knew that it was an exaggeration of his fear as soon as he thought it; if Masamune could hone himself into a killing machine under the same handicap, so would he.

But he would, the young Takeda general realised with quietly burgeoning delight, need an instructor. How accommodating of the universe that one should be right beneath him, waiting for his rejection, his anger at the insult of being loved and desired by a man who had maimed him to get the point across.

Carefully meeting Date Masamune's lone, lonely eye, Sanada Yukimura aligned their faces till the line of their gazes matched with mirror-like perfection. Revelling in their mingled breath, the lightning and fire of their acknowledged selves sparking currents of battle-fury and want and need and pure, unfiltered, unshackled adoration between them, Yukimura held the other man's attention. He held it till he could see nothing but himself and the joy of knowing at last that his feelings were not unrequited reflected on Masamune's face. Just as Masamune and the completion of holding the Dokuganryu's affection was sketched on his.

And then he accepted the challenge of loving – and fighting – the greatest claimant on his life, the only claimant on his heart.

It was their beginning.

* * *

><p><strong>Please review, and don't forget to read <strong>Loved **by **lyrainthedark**!**


	2. Need for Speed

**Disclaimer: I don't own Sengoku Basara or its characters.**

**A/N: Second in the **Loved/Beloved** series. You know where to find **Loved**!**

**Prompt**: Ends

**Premise**: On the Road

* * *

><p>The one thing Yukimura regretted most – of all the many, many, many things he regretted about their many arguments on that topic – was not asking again.<p>

_But that_, the young man mused, _wouldn't do any good. I did ask him one last time. _

_Begging _had been closer to it. Yukimura had begged Masamune to be careful, and nothing had come of it.

_Clearly I am regretting the wrong thing. I should have confiscated the keys. _

And _that_ would have ended with Masamune ploughing him down as he trashed their apartment in a frenzied, furious hunt for them, muttering all the time about "impractical" and **"stupid"** and "what the hell was I thinking, moving in with a naïve bimbo?" and "what next, Red, bubble wrap?"

And Yukimura would have listened with a lumpy larynx, ashamed and terrified of his own fear as much as he was terrified _because_ of the fear. He would have eventually handed the blasted keys over to his partner, surrendering to the higher authority of needing to go to work and earn money to contribute to their bills. _When what I really should have said in such a situation was "Yes! Bubble wrap! Teflon body armour too!"_

It was a little late to order the special protective gear now. Masamune might have enjoyed the irony of being waved off in such an anachronistic getup, but all he really needed anymore was a simple white sheet.

_Perhaps I shall make it a blue sheet. His favourite colour. With red bands at the edges to remind him to wait for me. _

Except that Yukimura wasn't certain at all if Masamune would agree to wait. The one-eyed young man was forever in a hurry, blazing through his day like he hadn't a minute to lose, not on anything.

The only time Masamune ever slowed down, Yukimura thought with a frisson of aching pleasure, was when night fell and they had each other all to themselves. Only then, reclining in bed, limbs and hair entwined, would Masamune take it slow and thorough and _savouring _till he had brought them both to the same quivering, impatient edge of completion. And then he would fling them over with hard, rough precision, reveling in Yukimura's cries for more and harder and deeper and faster and everywhere and please, please, oh please. Finally, when they lay together, condoms in the wastebasket to prevent a mess, Masamune would snuggle him like a teddy bear and tease him about his "need for speed" till Yukimura was ready to tear his hair out in irritation, afterglow be damned.

And then his exasperating lover would kiss him on the cheek with a sorry blue-grey eye and call him "silly Red" for having such "silly fears."

There certainly wouldn't be any more of _that_, Yukimura thought viciously, scrubbing away tears he couldn't afford to let fall yet. Masamune could take his "need for speed" and hang with it. In fact, the minute he got up there himself, he'd make sure Masamune _did_. It wouldn't hurt the man physically...but it sure might knock some sense into that thick, half-blind skull.

Yukimura shoved aside a pygmy piece of common sense that couldn't resist pointing out the immense satisfaction of a simple "I told you so." He was in the mood for overkill, and "I told you so" was a little too subtle for what he wanted to put across to the man he loved, even if arranging a hanging in the afterlife might prove a little daunting and more than a little troublesome. Masamune would probably struggle in protest, and Yukimura hated resisting the challenge of a physical battle with him.

But before he could get to it, there were some goodbyes he had to say. Mustering up the will to get out of the apartment and give his final words was harder than he had thought it would be. It would not have been an easy task in any dimension or circumstance, even if what he felt for Masamune had been hatred and not this marrow-deep devotion that chose to grow stronger at the exact moment it lost the object of its ardour.

_So perhaps we were both fools. He cared too little for me. I care far too much for him. _

It paralysed his heart to acknowledge such bitter medicine. Nevertheless, Yukimura repeated it greedily, making it a constant loop in his ears. Better numb and dazed than heartbroken and aware of it. A tic pulled at the edges of his mouth. In another lifetime, it might have been a smile. _If I'm numb, why do I know I'm heartsick? What contradictions..._

"**Stupid **Red," he whispered through cracked lips, mimicking his lover's speech patterns. "You should have protected him regardless."

Because that was what more love should have done. It should not have cowered in the face of real life and accepted the need for some risks.

Life-threatening risks.

Now, life-snatching risks.

_If you weren't gone, Masamune, I would kill you myself. This minute. Bare hands. Well, perhaps a cleaver or two. _

Because Masamune deserved it. Because now he wouldn't be able to go out and say goodbye to his body, kiss those chilly, still, unresponsive lips and bury his face in the hollow of that corded throat, bumping his nose against the Adam's apple that was Masamune's most erotic spot. Because Masamune had hurt him too much, too badly, and if Yukimura left the apartment he would likely climb onto his lover's motorcycle and drive himself into the nearest tree at the highest speed he could produce on the machine. Just to see what the reckless man had found so addictive about it.

The only problem with pulling such a stunt, Yukimura mused, was that it came without the guarantee that it would kill him. He had thought it over, and living as a cripple when he just wanted out was not on his post-funeral agenda.

But since his heart wouldn't move his legs to the car – and that was the problem, the _car_ and the _road_ – and the funeral home and back again...and what he really wanted to say could be said better to Masamune's face...

Yukimura considered it for a moment, to weigh how badly he needed to punch Masamune in the nose.

_Very, very badly_, he decided.

After that, he wanted to make love with him on a blue-and-red sheet. B_ut it might be bad luck to do it on a sheet which was once a shroud. _

So yes, why go to the funeral home at all? All he needed was right there at home.

Well, not _all_. Just the means to get to that _all_.

Suddenly, his poor insensible heart couldn't move him fast enough to the kitchen, to the knife and the arteries and all the blood in his body.

As Yukimura lay on the cold tile floor, he tried to rehearse his speech, the follow up to the punch on the nose and the hanging and the angry, desperate make up sex and the pleas to love him just a little bit more next time they lived and loved, just enough to live like a housebound hermit, because Yukimura wouldn't be able to take the thought of another round of fearing for Masamune's life and having those fears justified.

But his blood was eager and quick and his life was swift to leave, and all he could think was, _That "need for speed"...I'll bet that's the first thing you'll say to mock your carelessness, mock your death to me when I fall into your arms, up there. _

"Say it, then," he mumbled as the final flicker of pain left his eyes, "say any...just...say..."

* * *

><p><em><strong>To clarify a little<strong>_**: I have an extreme fear of accidents, especially road accidents. I received news yesterday that my younger sister was followed home by some creep who has been stalking her, and I started freaking out, thinking about the consequences of her speeding or driving rashly to get away from him. And so on and so forth…and it had to come out like this, because talking about it makes me feel more panicky. This story is basically me writing my fears out**.

**So yes, Masamune died in a bike crash because he never listened to Yukimura's fears, never bothered to take care. And this is Yukimura dealing with what comes after.**

**Please review, and don't forget to read **Loved **by **lyrainthedark**!**


	3. Heart

**Disclaimer: I don't own Sengoku Basara or its characters.**

**A/N: Second in the **Loved/Beloved **series****. You know where to find **Loved**! **

**As before, Masamune's Engrish will be in bold type. **

**Prompt: **Middles

**Premise: **First Time

* * *

><p>For the first time in the twenty-one years he had spent on this godforsaken land, Date Masamune regretted not heeding the advice of his elders.<p>

Not that Sarutobi Sasuke would _ever_ qualify as such. Even if he had been righter than right could be, a feat generally accomplished only by Kojuurou.

And everyone who knew Masamune knew that however careful he was about following his Right Eye's guidance on matters military and political, the man may as well spend his time getting the walls of their home to converse with him when it came to the Oushu chief's lone blind spot.

Not his right eye; that position had been claimed years ago, when Masamune was still a child.

Masamune's heart was a different story.

A different life.

A different place.

A different name.

_Red._

Vibrant. Bold. Beautiful.

"Red," he whispered, giving voice to the thrum in his chest and ache behind his eyes.

* * *

><p>The man seated at the opposite end of the table caught the nickname and not the endearment behind it. He frowned. "I do not feel it is appropriate for you to call me that, Masamune-dono."<p>

Masamune quirked a quizzical brow at him. "Why ever not, Red?"

Yukimura graced him with no further answer than a deepening of the furrow between his eyes.

"Haven't I always called you that?"

"And I have not objected, as it was not my place to."

"And now it is, is it, Red?" Masamune's voice was soft, a sharp contrast to the terse, clipped notes of Yukimura.

"I am the Tiger of Kai, Masamune-dono, no longer a simple vassal. I believe it is time we conducted ourselves as our station befits."

"And what does our position dictate we do? Red?"

An icy glint entered Yukimura's gaze – the gaze once brown and soft and wide with the innocence of years lived unfettered. When he spoke, it was to deliver an ultimatum. "We are clan leaders, Masamune-dono, and I am here to negotiate a truce with you. A truce that should have been reached two days ago. Unless we have results by tonight-"

"And if we don't?" Masamune interrupted, his own temper rising in the face of his counterpart's standoffishness.

"Then we shall have to go to war, won't we, Dokuganryu."

With nary a dismissive glance at his rival, Sanada Yukimura left the room, ignoring the stare of a morose blue-grey eye knifing between his shoulder blades.

* * *

><p>Date Masamune did not appreciate orders, unsolicited advice, or ultimatums. Therefore, he gave caution a nasty glare and opened negotiations that night – the final, do-or-die negotiations for truce – with a saucy "Ready to rumble, Red?"<p>

Yukimura pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to ward off a headache-inducing bout of irritation. "Do you lack basic comprehension skills..."

"Fine, whatever. Scarlet."

Yukimura glared.

Masamune canted his head at him, a wickedly defiant smirk lifting his lips at the corner. "It suits you."

"_Don't."_ The Tiger's head was low, scruffy brown bangs obscuring his eyes. Masamune started at the strangely intense objection – he had been expecting his rival to be furious at being teased, but Yukimura sounded genuinely upset.

Abruptly, the younger man got to his feet. Chin still tucked into his chest, he muttered plaintively, "Who am I, Masamune-dono?"

_Hurt_. He was _hurt_. Something he had done, the one-eyed man realised with a vague stirring of unease in the pit of his belly, had hurt Yukimura badly. Reaching out with an uncertain arm, Masamune stopped shy of touching the other man. Softly, he asked, "Red?"

And then cursed at himself. It had clearly been the wrong thing to say, for Yukimura was stumbling away from him, standing tall and proud and cold as the steel of his spears. "We're done here."

"But...the truce..." Masamune stumbled over his words, frightened at the harsh change in his rival's stance. _He's unrecognisable...where the __**hell**__ is my red warrior gone?_

He would not have the opportunity to find out, he learned, for Yukimura simply spat out an invitation to war, making good on his threat from the afternoon, and dashed to his quarters.

* * *

><p>Yukimura slid the door in place, trying not to slam it in the slot. Chest heaving with pent-up aggression, the Tiger looked about with wild eyes, gauging the horror of his final words to the Oushu chief.<p>

That was not how he had intended to bid farewell.

He had not intended it _at all._

_How did this happen, Oyakata-sama? How did such terrible things leave my tongue? Why did you not strike me dumb before I could say them?_

He wished, ardently, that he could scream his prayer to the heavens. But that was not how one prayed – and prayers were all he could communicate to the deceased lord of Kai now. Perhaps he should have kept this set to himself; Takeda Shingen would not have been pleased to know that his protege was ready to wage war on such a flimsy excuse.

Yukimura imagined trying to explain the fiasco to his lord. "I ran Kai into the ground because Date Masamune offended me with his affinity for nicknames."

He could already feel the punch coming.

But it never did come. _The dead do not care. _Even if they did, Takeda Shingen had never been a dynastic man. _He would have been glad to be free of such bother. _

Yukimura wished...wished to be free too. Wished to return and apologise, fling himself at the Dokuganryu's feet and beg for mercy. Wished for a new beginning to the night.

He wished because the last thing he wanted to do in his life, was to fight a battle rooted in enmity and anger with Date Masamune. A battle destined to end in death for one or both of them. He could not allow himself to hope for another outcome. If there had been a way out, his lord would have found it.

If there had been a way out, Uesugi Kenshin would not now be a wreck of a man, passing the zenith of his rule in a cloistered monastery because he could not bear the emotional burden that came with killing his foremost rival. In his eyes, Sanada Yukimura had seen the ravaged soul left behind, a soul that now wished that war had never been invented. And when Uesugi Kenshin spoke, Yukimura heard the monotonous voice of a man who simply wanted to die, because his had been the unforgivable hand that Takeda Shingen had fallen to.

_I don't want to be that man._

He had not wanted to be that man since his fateful visit to the Uesugi clan leader. That one ghastly visit had been his prime motivation for grasping Katakura Kojuurou's feelers towards a truce with blissful relief.

Fat lot of good that had brought. Now they were going to war whether he liked it or not, because he knew Masamune well enough to recognise that the one-eyed samurai would not, would never back down from such a direct and unreasonable challenge.

_I still don't want to be that man. _

Neither, he realised with a jolt of pained realisation, did he want Masamune to warp into a ruin of himself.

_But the only way to prevent a war now is if one of us is attacked by another general – unlikely at this time of year. Or..._

His breathing deepened, shadows crushing the cobwebs in his mind. Then slowed, as the obvious answer was discovered and rejected and tossed about and finally accepted with wholehearted fervour.

_Or...if one of us was to die before it._

Silk and linen rustling in the serene loneliness of a night in the mountains, Sanada Yukimura shuffled to the door and took an appreciative sniff of the fresh air, heavy with the scent of plum blossoms.

Then he reached for the red-bound steel of an expertly crafted spear and angled it towards his jugular.

_One stab._

_A spurt of blood._

That easy.

* * *

><p><em>Pain.<em>

That one word was the summary of the next 5 minutes of Yukimura's existence.

The pain of metal slicing through skin and muscle.

The pain of wood being knocked roughly out of his clenched fist.

The pain of being slammed to the floor by angry, scared hands.

The pain of roughly caring fingers scrabbling near the wound left by his spear, checking for depth.

The pain of a punishing fist to his jaw.

The pain of warm and dry lips pressing roughly to his beating heart, as if in a prayer of gratitude.

He fainted.

* * *

><p>He awoke to quietude and a highly irate one-eyed samurai.<p>

"_What_," Masamune bit out, as coherently as he could between jaws clenched so tight they were almost grinding each other to dust, "were you doing, Sanada Yukimura?"

Yukimura thought this was rather obtuse. It should have been clear where his actions were leading, especially as Masamune had been the one to stop them. No one else would have dared – or cared enough.

It was small comfort. In fact, it was a nuisance. Now he would simply have to wait till he returned home before he could find himself a secluded corner and kill himself properly. Yes, Yukimura decided, home would be safest. No random Dokuganryus sneaking around there, minding everything but their own business.

No Dokuganryus to save his sorry hide from madness, and kiss his heartbeat to revere his life, either. Yukimura could feel something fragile splintering, something he had never given a name to. But he could not allow himself to indulge in the memory of that fleeting caress.

Better this madness, than _that_ one.

Judging by the poorly concealed distress on his rival's face, Masamune might disagree. Well, everyone was entitled to their choices.

Just as Yukimura had already made his.

A fist slammed onto the futon, jerking him out of his sulk.

"I asked you a question. Sanada Yukimura. I. Want. It. Answered."

Yukimura shrugged, then blinked in surprise. "You...use my name."

"Well what the hell else was I supposed to use, after you pitched that hissy fit? Though I have a few in mind." Masamune's expression grew dark with malice. "Sissy. Moron. The Dim Dango. **Bloody fool. **Bastard."

"Now wait just a minute," Yukimura interrupted. "I must object to that last – my mother was quite thoroughly wed to my father when...when..."

"**Shut up!"**

Yukimura did so, following the command of Masamune's tone rather than his foreign words.

"Anyone who declares war on me because I called him by a nickname – what a half-arsed, conceited reason – and then goes and tries to kill himself because he's too much of a coward to actually _fight_ the damn war he's about to start is. A. Bastard. Bastard. Bastard. Bastard, bastard, bastard, bastard, _BASTARD_!" Masamune broke off panting, silently daring the other man to go on and try objecting.

Unsurprisingly, Yukimura did. "I am not a coward, Masamune-dono."

Something about the way he spoke – the total lack of fire and brimstone in his soft voice – not because he was indoors and this was private, but because something had leeched the essence that made Sanada Yukimura who he was, made Masamune pause and study him closely. He had watched over his rival through the hours and dressed the cut on his neck himself, but he had not actually taken the time to look at him properly.

He hadn't been able to bear it. Not the sight of his heart, lying disgraced and suicidal.

He had thought he would die.

He thought he very nearly _had_ died, when he had barged into Yukimura's room to try and calm him, and found him driving his own weapon into his throat. Later, when he was sure that Yukimura wasn't going anywhere, he had been so enraged, so maddened by the apparent abandonment that he had been forced to use all the training of his youth to prevent himself from doing something he would regret.

Like killing the downed Tiger.

Like killing _himself_, just to show Sanada Yukimura what it felt like to be at the receiving end of such a stunt.

Like pulling his rival into his arms, curling around him with every limb he possessed. Like burrowing his nose into Yukimura's neck, smelling the clean blood that was clotting beneath the bandages. Like wrapping that long, silky ponytail tightly around his wrist. Like holding tight and never letting go.

"How did we come to this," he whimpered now, begging for a straight answer. "What were you...why, Red?"

A pained shudder wracked through the other man's body.

"You never had a beef with it before. I could call you any number of things...you'd just charge at me, screaming your head off, spears waving. What changed?" He was shaking himself, with the anger and confusion he had been holding back.

After what seemed like ages, Yukimura looked at him. "I am Sanada Yukimura. I am the Tiger of Kai."

"...and?"

"Tell me, Masamune-dono...who am I? In your vision, in your scope of this land, who is Sanada Yukimura? Is he the Tiger of Kai? Is he the powerful general he was trained to be? Is he...just..."

"Tell me," Masamune prodded, trying to be patient. Trying to be gentle.

It came then, and it was a pitiful little announcement. "No one takes me seriously, Masamune-dono."

It was an enemy the chief of Oushu had never had to contend with.

"Sasuke's the same. He thinks I'm a child, playing in costume."

Masamune thought of his own retainer, his faithful and stoic Right Eye. No, this was definitely something he had never needed to smack down. He had been given the hereditary gift of a confident carriage and brash charisma. The pure talent for fighting that being half-blind had merely honed to a sharper degree of perfection had made his detractors as well as supporters sit up and take note of him. He – all of him, even the talent for strategy that he rarely bothered to display – was a weapon, and everyone who saw him knew it at once.

So what, he wondered, did they see when they looked at Sanada Yukimura? _He's my rival. My equal. My soul. Everything I am, he is. He has to be, or I wouldn't be. _It was true, to him. If Yukimura was diminished, then so was he. They were equals, destined to be forever so. He had known it at the first clash of their steel.

That first encounter had taken his breath away and given it back as a mounting obsession.

Consequently, he had never taken into account Yukimura's age, his slender and delicate face, his wide-eyed innocence, his clownish prancing to the tune of countless "Oyakata-sama!s," his endearing straightforwardness, and applied them to a stranger's sight. To his own eye, this man was everything made to fit him and battle him.

To a stranger, he now saw, the boy was just a boy.

To anyone incapable of bringing out Sanada Yukimura's tremendous potential – and that meant everyone save Masamune – the hot-headed brunette would not yet look like the Tiger of Kai. And yet, even as Masamune understood his flash of temper at the teasing and sudden declaration of war, he could not see why Sanada had felt the need to follow up his threats with suicide.

So he asked.

* * *

><p>"..."<p>

Masamune leaned closer, concentrating. "What?"

"I didn't want to kill you," Yukimura mumbled again, at an audible level.

Masamune stared at him.

And stared.

And stared.

And stared till the shame on Yukimura's face had faded to general annoyance. Really, the Tiger griped, one would expect such a momentous announcement to be met with a certain...verve, be it in rejection or acceptance. The silent, glazed over stare was starting to creep him out.

Just as he was mustering the energy to whack his rival on the head, Masamune spoke up. In halting, insufferably patient tones, he asked, "Tell me, Red...did it ever occur to you that maybe _you_ would be the one who ended up dead?"

Yukimura sighed in exasperation. Leave it to the Dokuganryu to turn everything into a contest and miss the actual point. "Very well, I could have been the one dying. Could you live with that?"

"What."

"Could you live with my blood on your hands, Masamune-dono?"

"We fight-"

"To kill?"

A screeching silence filled the air around them; the silence of a hundred battle cries and a thousand lives taken and one life – the one life whose blood had been shed and regretted and shed again, but never quite enough to be fatal.

"No," Masamune choked out through raspy throat and dry mouth. "No. We don't."

The tension hung, waiting.

"You were killing yourself because you didn't want to kill me...or be killed."

Yukimura nodded.

"...what makes you care?"

"Uesugi-dono took my lord's life..."

"And what does that **damn** monk have to do with _us?_"

"Everything, Masamune-dono. The War God of Echigo...he is now just a broken old monk."

Masamune stared at him, uncomprehending.

"He's just waiting for the end of his days." Slowly, the Tiger sat up, grasping his companion's shoulder for support. "I...did not want either of us to turn into such a creature. We were not made for such defeat, you and I."

"We're still rivals," the Oushu chief said, shock numbing his system, awareness of the warm body using him as a crutch growing in his belly.

"We're not enemies...we can't make that mistake. Oyakata-sama and Uesugi-dono did. Now one's dead and the other might as well be. I..._I_ made that mistake when I so foolishly challenged you to a pointless fight."

Carefully, Yukimura met the Dragon's lone eye. "I don't want to kill you, Masamune-dono. I chose death...because your life is greater than our memory."

And before Masamune could object, reciprocate, or circumvent, he leaned forward in imitation of a young soldier's wife he had seen once, greeting her husband after a long military campaign. Tilting his head to the right, ensuring the angle was perfectly aligned, he pressed trembling, scorching lips to those of the man who was born to be his lifelong equal.

Of course, in due course, Masamune's ardour kicked the Yukimura-obsessed corner of his brain – by far the largest corner to exist in there – and jolted it into action. And that was how when they finally broke the kiss, Yukimura found himself pinned to the futon, lungs bursting for air, and lips tingling with residual lightning.

Masamune leaned down again, before he could register anything more than a leaping sense of delight and incredulity, and captured his lips, nipping and brushing his tongue over them, finally nudging the dazed Tiger's mouth open with a persistent finger to his chin.

Yukimura's world dissolved.

Smooth darkness and slick affection and teasing, curling, aching in yet another battle. Tongue curled around tongue, tips flicking together in a newly discovered rhythm, sending sparks of pleasing pain down their spines, down their limbs, pooling in the fingertips that clutched each other closer. Somewhere, amid the gentle wriggling of their bodies as they plundered for dominance in a kiss neither had ever experienced before, something _touched._

Yukimura dragged himself away from the hypnotism of Masamune's lips, gasping. "What...was that!"

"You don't know...?" Masamune wondered if this was Sanada's idea of a joke, but looking back at the loud, extravagantly testosterone-filled life he had led with Takeda Shingen, he was forced to conclude that Yukimura indeed had no idea what went on belowstairs.

Still, it was a theory worth checking. With arch precision, Masamune rolled his hips once. They brushed against each other, twin arousals shielded by thin layers of silk. On cue, Yukimura twisted, gasped as the motion brought them in firmer contact, rubbed in search of a nameless friction, and fell still, shuddering.

"What is happening to me, Masamune-dono?"

Masamune didn't bother to reply, too busy gritting his teeth in an attempt to suppress the lust skating over his body. Impatient in his curiosity, Yukimura shoved him off and sat up, swiftly undoing his hakama to peek inside. "What the..." _Is it supposed to do that?_ A little alarmed, he pulled off the loose pants and discarded his fundoshi as well, completely disregarding the presence of a highly aroused and even more highly amused one-eyed samurai who was eyeing him like a hawk.

_Yes...something is definitely not right. _

Reaching out with a hesitant finger, he poked at himself, trying to prod it down to its usual limp state.

And moaned.

Jerking his finger back with impossibly wide eyes, he turned to Masamune for help. "Masamune-dono...this is...what just happened...am I sick?"

Masamune shook his head, lips pressed together in stern self-control.

"Then..then...," Yukimura tried pressing the taut appendage down again, prompting a panicked groan of inadvertent pleasure from himself and a desirous one from his voyeur, "is this my punishment for behaving in such a disgraceful manner all through my visit?"

That was as far as he got before strong arms wound round his shoulders and a nose snuffled into the hollow of his clavicle, snorting in near-hysterical chuckles. Biting into the corded skin below the bandage, Masamune managed a weak "So help me, you really are a piece of work, aren't you Red?"

Suppressing the insane urge to bare his neck for further biting, Yukimura frowned at him. "Stop calling me that."

"Fat chance," the Dokuganryu shot back. Tapping a flushed cheek with his fingertips, he murmured, "Look...you're blushing red." The same fingertips travelled in a slow, straight path to Yukimura's chin, down his throat and danced around his nipples.

He twitched, reached out and grabbed those wandering torture tools. Angry brown eyes met a teasing blue-grey one, demanding an explanation. Masamune sighed, smiled in whimsical surrender and pressed a kiss to the tip of his nose.

"You love me, Sanada Yukimura. That's what this is."

"Love..."

"And I love you, that's what it is too."

"Love..."

"Problem?"

"...I do not love you the way I loved Oyakata-sama."

Masamune sighed again. "And I don't love you the way I love Kojuurou...and that's all good because anything else is plain _strange_."

"Then...love? We are not family, nor friends, Masamune-dono."

It wasn't that Yukimura was that foolish – he did know of love, as love was and could be between two perfect strangers. He simply didn't know of the intimacy that came with it. That this was something important, whatever was happening between their bodies, was apparent. The urge was too strong, too eager and hungry for fulfillment.

But the whats and hows and whys and wherefores of the fiery current between them were tripping him up.

A word came to him, from an old classic he had read, one of the rare pieces of literature to be found in the otherwise scholarly Takeda library.

_Lover_.

He whispered it to himself, rolling it in his mouth, tasting the edges. _Date Masamune and I share the kind of love that is unique to lovers. We are to be...lovers, then._

"I like it."

"Huh?"

"Being lovers...that is what we are doing, are we not? We are becoming lovers!"

A slow grin took over Masamune's lips. Curving along his jaw, it sparkled with unrestrained, wanton lust and humour and gratitude. "Yeah, we are."

"Teach me how?"

Masamune blinked at him. Yukimura pressed a kiss to his lips again, swift as a butterfly. The world tilted and tossed and he was once again supine, sprawled beneath a nude Masamune who was eyeing his body with lustful interest. Never one to back down, he stared back, raking his gaze over every inch of the body he had fought so many times that he was as attuned to its nuances as he was to his own.

First their eyes met, having looked their fill. Then lips, and hands and chests and then an imitation of their first position. Hips nestled together, Masamune moved, rubbing softly. Slowly. Exquisitely.

Once.

Twice.

A third time, and again, again and again, till Yukimura was clinging to his shoulders, breath coming in aching little pants as the friction titillated, then moved him to a frenzy of desire. Calloused palms smoothed over his torso, tracing the musculature till they brushed over nipples that were hard and soft and almost painfully tender. Sharp teeth nipped at his jaw, lips moist from kisses fluttered over his neck and a hot, squirming tongue touched his nipple.

Yukimura gasped. Arched. For an indelible moment, Masamune kept still, letting the edge of the heat fade to pleasant warmth. Sucking gently, he waited till his companion was threading his fingers into his hair, pressing his mouth closer.

"Please...please..."

"More?"

Trembling at yet another pass of tongue and teeth over his chest as they crossed to his other nipple and latched on with the vigour of a newborn babe, Yukimura nodded, unable to speak through the cries of pleasure rumbling in his throat.

Permission granted, Masamune curled his fingers around his rival's, cradling his hand in a tender gesture of possessiveness. Flashing a wolfish grin at Yukimura, he guided their hands down, letting their arousals brush with the lightest of touches. Flicking his gaze back to the other's face, wanting to trace every instance of pleasure that crossed his soul, Masamune wrapped their combined fingers around each other and _stroked. _

Yukimura _screamed_, a wild, elated shout at the shock of sudden contact and the darting, burning, irresistible pleasure that it brought. Encouraged by the abandonment with which the younger man had given himself over to their passion, Masamune allowed his own growls and gasps to spill over, struggling to maintain the steady, massaging rhythm he had started with.

But his body was shaking and Yukimura was writhing and their fingers were grappling, twisting, slipping, rubbing over themselves and each other with desperation and mindless, heedless desire for an _end._

At last, by some primitive instinct, Yukimura's hand caught their tips in the hollow of his palm. A groan, sliding and friction and moaning and up and down and grind and a slow, deep kiss with a hard, swift squeeze and then finally, finally twin bursts of pleasure that was simply pleasure. Overwhelming, overflowing, overtaking pleasure that spilled out of their mouths in muffled cries and caressing tongues and held them hostage till they were spent.

* * *

><p>There was really no more need for him to wrap himself around Yukimura like the red string of fate, but Masamune couldn't resist prolonging their delirium by snuggling against him, tickling sensitive spots with happy fingers, dropping a kiss here and another there.<p>

The Tiger of Kai revelled in the adoring attention, the first such caresses he had received in his entire life. Not that he had ever lacked love – Takeda Shingen had been a father to him in many ways and Sasuke, for all his flippancy, was a loyal comrade and friend in his off hours.

But there had been no gentleness, no quiet words of simple sweetness, no passion that mingled and harmonised till his soul felt like it belonged to someone else. He slid an arm around Masamune's waist and turned his head, pillowing his cheek against his lover's hair. With his other hand, he mimicked the little touches Masamune was plying him with, grinning as the one-eyed man twitched and grumbled before settling into peaceful half-slumber.

"Masamune-dono?"

"Hnh?"

"Lovers?"

"Red...it's late. Idiot question hours are long since over."

That was a yes, he supposed. But there was another question – a more important one, because it had brought them here, moulded them into two halves of a merciless whole.

"Are we also...still...rivals?"

Because as lovers they were one, but as rival they were equals who could merge into oneness. Because one equation was the other and together they were the sum and balance of their relationship. Because if they had to be one, then they had to be both.

Because Date Masamune and Sanada Yukimura never took the middle road to a safe destination, but parried and embraced side-by-side through one adventure after another till heaven was breached.

Because it was _important_, the only way they could be possible, and he wanted it, and he wanted Masamune to want it too.

"Masamune-dono...are we? Rivals?"

He felt the curve of a smile against his skin and the hum of a low voice zinging through his nerve-endings, unfurling in his heart.

"We always will be, Red."

* * *

><p><strong>Please review - it really helps with the muses, and if you'd like to see us write on a certain premise, put it in your review! We'll try and write on it. And don't forget to read <strong>Loved **by **lyrainthedark**!**


	4. Tunnel Vision

**Disclaimer: I don't own Sengoku Basara or its characters.**

**A/N: Second in the **Loved/Beloved **series****. You know where to find **Loved**!  
><strong>

**Masamune's Engrish is in bold. Thoughts and stream of consciousness are in italics. **

**Prompt: **Inside

**Premise: **One of them is going to die, and he knows it.

* * *

><p><em>It's been a wonderful life, you bastard.<em>

The sun beamed down on the paddy fields, raising the steam of sweating labour and warm onigiri, tracing the gleaming muscles of the workers as they toiled over the green stalks. Their ruler stood unheeded on a slow-rising hill, feeling the wind crease against the fine wrinkles of his skin as he surveyed his lands. Far below, at the bottom of the slope, he could make out the vague forms of a young man and woman, the former attempting to foist a clumsy bouquet of flowers on the latter.

_My eyesight's going...I can barely see what those young idiots are getting up to. _

He could almost hear the frown in his rival's voice, disapproval echoing through the words.

_I suppose you'd like to tell me I'm being a **fool**. That this is how most men court their beloveds..._

"Fair enough," he mumbled aloud, eyeing the couple's progress with a doubtful blue-grey eye. "But I'd do it differently."

_And now, I suppose you want to tell me that jumping your bones wasn't romantic at all._

A slow smirk stretched the leathery lines of his face. His back straightened under the memories of lust.

_Don't glare. You were a passionate one. Louder than any woman I had...before you..._

He suppressed the guilt of the two women he had had, after, telling himself it had not been infidelity. The first, curvacious and sassy, taken in a frenzy of desire and desperation. The second, gentle and comforting, taken because he was simply desperate.

_They writhed, did you know? Moaned and screamed their heads off...I only had them once, but I was a good lover, eh!_

Privately, he muttered, "Suck on _that_." And hoped wildly that the sudden chill in the breeze raking in from the north was the result of jealousy, and not the portent of a cold autumn.

The sane part of him insisted on a weather change.

The obsessed, foolish part – by far the larger – gleefully latched onto the jealousy theory and decided to stick a bit of wasabi in the sores.

_Nice bodies on them. Soft. Kinda huggable. Easy to hold, too...I think I prefer it, after all. You know me, I'm a lazy old man. All those planes and slippery-smooth muscles of yours were just too much work. _

He twitched as the wind rose in a wail and brushed a snowy lock of hair out of his eye. "**Damn it. **Better go down...looks like a thunderstorm tonight." With some difficulty, he negotiated his joints on the steady mount he had brought with him, and trotted back down to the castle that was his base.

_Not that I'm going to get any sleep. All thanks to you, you rotten piece of filth._

Because it had been a musky, volatile summer's day like this, forty years ago, that he had lost his body – and his soul – to a heartless, mayfly beauty.

* * *

><p>"Masamune-dono?"<p>

The tentative whisper echoed through the courtyard, skimming over the quiet fish in the pond, going about their business as though red-clad enemy generals were a tediously common sight in the middle of the night.

The man who was feeding them felt otherwise. He felt so strongly otherwise, in fact, that he pointed a sword at the intruder before he bothered to ask what Sanada Yukimura was doing, sneaking into his home out of the blue.

Yukimura flashed a rather hurt look at his disgruntled rival, ignoring the man's weapon in favour of scowling at the ground. "I'm not here to assassinate you, Masamune-dono."

Masamune pretended that he wasn't completely confuzzled. Even _he_ knew that the Takega general was incapable of such a deed...but it would have been a comfort, because he had no other answers.

"Then what're you here for, Red?"

The boy's mouth opened to make an eager declaration, then closed with a snap before it could escape. Soft brown eyes peered about the courtyard, and if Masamune hadn't seen Yukimura's hands clenched into tight fists at his side, he would have sworn that the young tiger was in a nervous fidget.

Bemusement brushed aside in favour of the abnormally clingy affection he felt surging inside him whenever the fluffy-haired samurai was around, Masamune wrapped his hands around Yukimura's fists, stroking the tense digits till they relaxed and wrapped around his own.

"What's up, Sanada Yukimura? You in trouble?"

His companion shook his head, lips clamped together.

"Red?" Unbeknownst to Masamune, his voice had softened, the rough accents smoothing to a low caress.

Instantly, with his characteristic straightforwardness, Yukimura responded.

"I have come to declare my affection for you, Masamune-dono! If you will accept this humble Yukimura, I shall offer you my heart...on...a platt...er..." he trailed off, suddenly uneasy at the stiffening of the Dokuganryu's stance. Fortifying himself with a deep breath, he ignored the looming ache in his chest and finished his little speech - "I shall understand, if you wish to never lay eyes on my again. But I felt that I would be doing myself – us – a disservice if I did not request this one night of you."

"_Huh?"_

An uncomfortable blush dusted the boy's cheeks and he leaned closer. In a significantly lower voice, he elaborated, "I've been taking lessons from Sasuke, Masamune-dono. I shall not be clumsy. One night...I beg you?"

Before Masamune could register the request that was being made of him, let alone make up his mind on what he was going to do with it, Yukimura closed the inches between them and pressed bold, quivering lips on his.

And then, of course, there could _be_ no thought.

Just the push and pull of bodies designed for battle, as they grew accustomed to pleasure.

Just the slide and nip of teeth, as they tasted and savoured.

Just the tickle and stroke of calloused hands, as they wandered in wanton curiosity.

Just the puffing of strained breaths, as they mingled in heavy gasps and muffled groans.

Just fingertips on skin and tongues on pebbling nipples and hard arousals grinding in a frenzy of want.

Just soft and slow, eager and shy, wanting and wanted, quick and wild, hungry and aching.

Just, for one night, the giving of pleasure and gentle kisses to battle-hardened souls.

They spent the dawn curled under the light blankets on Masamune's futon, little touches and petulant nibbling punctuating what neither could express out loud.

Then the dawn was over, and Sanada Yukimura slipped away with a bashful grin and a piercing lack of promises.

It was not until three uncomfortable weeks later that Masamune discovered where his future had gone – to a battle that Kai could never win, a battle of honour and not conquest.

He did not return.

* * *

><p>The storm was falling silent, parting way for the first rays of sunlight. The old man wriggled out of his bedding, reaching the doorway in time to catch them, letting the residual breeze dry the cold sweat of a night spent shuddering in remembrance.<p>

He didn't dwell on it, beyond the need for a bath. After all, it was how he spent nearly every summer night, these days.

_It's senility. I've grown old, after all. So don't get smug...it's senility, you fat bastard!_

He could feel the absurdity of his choice of adjectives. He knew he wasn't the only one – his rival would have found the idea hilarious, too.

_But you were young, back then. Right now you'd be like me. Back bent and knobby-kneed and crotchety. Only fatter. Much fatter. All that dango had to go SOMEWHERE._

His retainer was emerging from his own room, waving a stack of scrolls at him – a reminder of the trade treaties that required negotiation. Nodding in compliance, the man turned away from the sun, from it's early red heat, and shuffled into his morning ablutions.

_Bet you'll be a fatso. I'll get up there – can't be long now, going by the state of my health – and first thing I'll see is a big, fat, naked belly. Trying to look hotshot in a red leather jacket. _

Against his will, he snorted at the mental image accompanying that thought.

Against his will, a tear crept down his weathered, sunken cheek, turning the snort into a choked sob.

_You'd better be there. When I get up there – and it won't be long – you'd better be there, waving your pork roast belly in my face, you damned bastard._

He left it there, glimmering on his skin, drying in the sunshine as he crossed over to the main hall in search of breakfast.

_Be there. _

* * *

><p>Red leather flaps in the breeze, moulding itself to a lithe, youthful body. Brown eyes crinkle in wretched amusement, impatience dancing at the edges of their owner's mouth.<p>

"I'll be here, Masamune-dono."

He flicks a pebble into the stream he lounges by, a motion completed a million times before, bored and apathetic. He thinks of the old voice that croaks and grumbles at him from below, tuning it out when it gets too repetitive. The decades have taken their toll, he thinks, and decides that the one he is waiting for would enjoy being young again.

He is proud of the life he has been following from above, fiercely proud of its progress.

Yet he wishes it would end. These days, he thinks that it's high time it ended.

His ears, buzzing with forty years of griping directed at him, still manage to catch an odd snippet, mingled with a pitiful plea.

He scowls derisively, but he can't let the insult go.

"I am not fat, Masamune-dono."

After a moment, he adds – softly, desperately - "Hurry up."

* * *

><p><strong>Please review, and don't forget to read <strong>Loved **by **lyrainthedark**!**


	5. Future Imperfect

**Disclaimer: I don't own Sengoku Basara or its characters.**

**A/N: Fifth in the **Loved/Beloved **series****. You know where to find **Loved**!**

**Prompt: **Outside

**Premise: **Masamune takes his pleasure where he chooses. Yukimura is desperately in love with the one-eyed dragon. What is the price for a dream fulfilled? What is the consequence of a rival despoiled?.

**Warnings: Graphic violence and possible triggers. **

**Also, I recommend that you read this while listening to: **www. youtube watch?v=MMZ98XHyKYg** (remove the spaces) Or don't, but this is the song that you can blame for this...thing I call a story, anyway.**

* * *

><p>"You should be ashamed of yourself – you know that, don't you?"<p>

Masamune narrows his eye in irritation and slides the door shut with enough force to crack the screen in half. Outside, Yukimura feels the rain slide under the collar of his leather jacket – five centuries have not managed to change his sartorial preferences – and wonders why he is here.

* * *

><p>Yukimura is not his name, of course. He wishes he was that lucky. He is Yukimura only to Masamune, and to the world he is something he does not care to be. He tries his best to be dutiful and loving. Mostly, he succeeds, for he has never failed except at the things that mattered most. Now <em>there<em> he has failed spectacularly, and he even feels halfway proud of it until he thinks of Masamune.

And then he just wants to die.

Because he will leave his room, cross the city to where Masamune spends his days tucked away in a quietly expensive apartment, and he will turn into the world's most honest, most earnest stalker. He will dog Masamune's steps till the one-eyed man radiates violence. A part of him wants it, wants the heavy pressure of Masamune's fists pummelling his face and body.

The other part of him waits in the rain, like every other time, for Masamune to emerge. Yukimura – that is how he prefers to think of himself – knows that he will while the hours away with a little guessing game he has invented. Rose perfume, or lilies? Jasmine, or something sharper and spicier and not floral at all? Pure musk, or the heavy sweet-sourness of fruits?

It is his only way of knowing which of the women that reside in the discreet white building has been touching Masamune. Their faces and names have been committed to his memory; when he moans in his bed at night, he is dreaming of their hot, dark blood gushing over his hands, pouring between his lips as payment for taking what has always been rightfully _his._

One of these days, Yukimura promises himself, he will snap. It will be spectacular, he thinks, and sketches Masamune's expression with pleasure. The one-eyed man, his one-eyed man...what will go through his head? Yukimura does not know, but he is willing to find out.

The doors open, and Masamune stalks out. He seems frustrated, and makes straight for the lamppost where Yukimura leans straight and slim. His face is twisted in anger, but Yukimura is pleased that Masamune has acknowledged his presence so blatantly. He feels a curiously fierce rush of joy, but then there is a blue eye and warm breath about two inches from his face and he simply forgets to function.

"Go. Away." Masamune speaks in a low voice, trying to not create a scene in public.

"You cannot perform with the knowledge that I stand here, waiting for you to come to your senses?" Yukimura asks. Though his manner is as studiously polite as in the old days, he cannot mask the possessiveness that comes with the freedom of this modern era. He does have to keep reminding himself that he _can_, though. It's still not quite natural for him to be so demanding.

_Ah well, _he reasons, _a man has limits. _Masamune is quite adept at crossing every last one of his. Yukimura decides that much as he adores his once-rival, he simply will not take such abuse. Hence, before Masamune can say something derogatory or worse, he adds, "You owe me, Masamune-dono."

It is an honorific that Masamune has not heard in five hundred years. Of course, he has spent a good four hundred and eighty-something of them in a state of non-existence, but it still counts. Open shock replaces the rage in his eye, dogged by a pain that lashes Yukimura to the core.

_Ah, how could I have forgotten,_ he thinks, _the last time I saw Masamune suffering like this? Back then... _

But he comes up blank. It is a part of his memories that has never returned to him; he remembers every last detail of his previous life as a feudal samurai, save this. He is now nineteen years old, about the same age as he had been when he had seen Masamune's face this haggard, but he cannot, for the life of him, recall _why_. He assures himself it is of no consequence. After all, they had both died young – that much Yukimura does remember – and perhaps Masamune was simply feeling sentimental about their lost love back then. Such melancholy over trivial matters fitted the Dokuganryu to a T. Masamune would have seen the loss of their natural lifespans as defeat, and he was a man who took everything with a confident smile – except defeat.

A defeated Masamune was a hellish Masamune to deal with, as Yukimura knew quite well. How many times had his rival thrown him against the ground and practically _snatched_ affection from him, without heed for location or timing, just because he needed comforting over some trivial issue that he had had to cede?

Yukimura had never been able to keep count after the first forty, but he still remembered every touch, every hard kiss, every stroke of Masamune's penis inside him, every brush of Masamune's tongue and teeth against his own member, and each aftermath – their bodies sweaty and tired, their arms around each other in a close embrace. Masamune had always been a hard lover, yet a tenderly possessive love. To come to Yukimura for consolation and reassurance after any defeat had been his natural routine in those days.

That was why Yukimura could not fathom the reason this Masamune did not react in the same way to what he must have undoubtedly seen as the greatest loss of his life. His _lives_, in fact, because Masamune was like him, not the sort to distinguish between past and present as long as the players were the same. _But perhaps the burden of this defeat was too much...? _Yukimura doesn't know for certain, but he can see that he has toppled his rival's equilibrium completely and waits patiently for an answer.

From the closeness of Masamune's body, he hopes it will be a kiss. _Their _kiss.

For a moment, Masamune's lips are almost upon him, and he closes his eyes. Anticipation is written plainly on his face, but there is no more than a fleeting ghost across his lips. He opens his eyes, confused. Masamune is walking away from him with cruel purpose. He is returning to the brothel, and before the door shuts him off from sight, Yukimura catches a glimpse of him pulling a voluptuous peroxide blonde towards him, his palms skimming across her body.

He goes numb, and decides that it is high time he snapped.

* * *

><p>Late that night, Yukimura leaves a gift on Masamune's doorstep. It is hair, a rough mass of bleached blonde hair, neatly wreathing a pair of lusciously curved, pink-nippled breasts. Yukimura has arranged the whole with his customary attention to ornamental detail and wrapped it in tasteful blue velvet. He rings the doorbell and leaves.<p>

It is not yet time for him to see Masamune's face; that is a pleasure he will deny himself if the one-eyed man gets the point. He knows that Masamune will find him – he always does.

* * *

><p>A week passes in a haze of sleepless vigil. Yukimura's apartment remains empty of sex and purpose; Masamune has not called.<p>

Very well, he decides, he shall simply have to go back to the beginning. He returns to Masamune's place, hoping to try and speak with him as he had first done when the weight of his memories had exploded and he had known that his lover, his soul was alive in this era. He had gone with hope and a smile, bursting with energy – and that I where he stops trying to think of the ensuing confrontation. What he had hoped would be a tearful reunion had in reality been a cold slamming of the door in his face, and an order to leave.

If it had not been for the gleam of horrified recognition, of longing and desire, in Masamune's eye at their first glimpse of each other's reborn selves, Yukimura would have thought that this Masamune remembered nothing of the past. Some days, he thinks that he would prefer that to _this_, because Masamune's deliberate depersonalisation of Yukimura is turning him into a monster.

Much later, after Masamune has ignored the doorbell and made a point of letting Yukimura follow him to the brothel again, Yukimura is cleaning tissue and ligaments from his fingernails, and wondering how to get the stain of crushed eyeballs our of his tablecloth – he had decided that the girl's eyes were far too dull and ordinary to be presented to Masamune – before he puts the finishing touches on his newly prepared gift. As he watches the girl's bones and leftover organs slowly charring in the fireplace, he decides that he already has become something unnameable.

He does not care, however, if it helps him win his lover back.

* * *

><p>Yukimura is unsure of the direction of his feelings. His second gift seems to have made an impact – Masamune has not left his home in two weeks. Even his groceries have been home delivered. And yet, Yukimura is dissatisfied. He has doused himself in blood as promised, but he feels alien and unfulfilled. An uneasy part of him wonders if it has been the right course of action to take. He had wanted to stop Masamune from going to those women, and he has. But the intention was never to turn Masamune into a housebound recluse.<p>

It is almost as if Masamune has grown _afraid_ of Yukimura. The sienna-eyed young man enjoys a quiet laugh at the very idea. His Masamune! Afraid! He thinks it unlikely.

And yet...he eyes eyes the door uncertainly. Masamune is within; he can hear the sounds of someone shuffling inside, the thump of boots walking towards the door. Yukimura feels relieved. He has been waiting for hours, debating the wisdom of ringing the bell and entering the normal way – or not entering, because a part of him is firmly convinced that Masamune needs further persuasion, but Yukimura is tired of coming p with creative ways to put a woman on a platter – or breaking and ambushing his other half that way.

The boots approach the door; he has been saved from making the decision. He can feel his hopes rising in wild flight. Perhaps Masamune has finally decided to see him, has prepared his speeches and declarations of love eternal? The door opens, and they are together once again, face to face. Masamune is gaunt and stunned; Yukimura is so delighted at the absence of rancour in Masamune to notice anything else.

"I do not need speeches, you know!" he announces cheerfully, with his ancient enthusiasm. "All I wish, Masamune-dono, is for to treat me the way you used to." He finds, to his amazement, that he has to fight off a blush at this point, but he soldiers on bravely. "You just have to take...me..."

Yukimura trails off, not in shyness but in horror, because Masamune is retreating within his apartment, his face a blank mask of nothing. Before the door can shut fully, Yukimura lunges forward and forces his way in. Something in swirling inside his belly, something black and unhappy.

"No," he says, shocking himself with the force of the command. He has _never_ commanded Masamune to do anything.

Masamune gives him a short, frozen look, and simply turns away, going further into his home. His shoulders are stooped, his hair greasy and unkempt. For the first time, Yukimura sees the condition the one-eyed man is in.

"Masamune-dono?" his voice comes out in a terrified whisper, he darts from behind to enclose Masamune in his arms. He can feel the other man's ribs, his thin flesh and weakness and grows more scared than ever. "What has happened?' he asks, panicking. "Masamune-dono...why are you doing this? Why don't you come to me...why have you kept running away from me, Masamune-dono?"

Masamune shudders.

"Is it the women? That was just...I wanted you to _stop_, Masamune-dono! It won't happen again!" Yukimura is aware that it is a futile line of questioning, though. Masamune has been closed to him from the very beginning of their existence in this era. The thing in his belly churns again, stronger. He makes an attempt to identify it. _Is this despair? _He buries his face in Masamune's shoulder, his tongue darts out to press a hot, needy kiss on the skin there.

Masamune goes stiff, and then shudders. This time, Yukimura has no difficulty recognising the body language.

Rejection.

Total rejection.

Something worse.

Dimly, he thinks to himself, _I have been waiting for this_, and does, in fact, snap.

* * *

><p>What happens next is deliberate. Yukimura remains, even in the frenzy of his rage – that is what has been unsettling his gut all this time – focused on the task before him. It does not take him long to overpower Masamune and tie him to the bed, spreadeagled. He even takes the time to neatly fold his once-lover's clothes and set them on a chair. Masamune struggles weakly, and it only drives Yukimura's fury higher, because he knows that the one-eyed man is <em>accepting<em> this atrocity.

There is pain in Masamune, pain on his lips and his penis and his anus, and then within him, because Yukimura is ruthless. He uses no tools save himself to tear Masamune outside and in. Yukimura chews his lips, scratches deep ruts down his torso and back till strips of flesh are hanging off Masamune. There are pieces of skin stuck under Yukimura's fingernails but he disregards the filth because he is not going to bother with preparing Masamune for entry.

Still, Masamune does not scream. He moans, too weak and aching and tired to react with more energy. The sound is wonderfully alluring to Yukimura's ears, even if it clashes with Masamune's body, lying quiet and passive when Yukimura's penis rips through his anus, slamming inside him with merciless, brutal desire. He achieves orgasm at last, grunting and straining, lifting Masamune's hips off the bed to see the slimy mixture of blood and semen and feces that spills out.

He dares to see Masamune's face. The one-eyed man looks almost peaceful; once again, Yukimura is struck by his attitude to the entire ordeal. With deliberate malice, he scoops up some of the mess that is still dribbling out of Masamune and wipes it across the other's lips, forcing it into his mouth. Masamune retches and vomits reflexively and Yukimura has to then untie him and hold him up so that he doesn't choke on the bile.

He feels a tiny bit better now.

Finally, Masamune looks at his face, meets his eyes carefully. Yukimura is expecting hatred, fright, shock, revulsion, a whole gamut of things of that nature. What he finds has him scuttling back from the bed and the man in it, his edges cracking and melding in a guttural series of cries that he cannot make sense of.

Masamune gets up slowly, almost crawling towards Yukimura, who trapped between the bed and the wall. He reaches the wild-eyed man, cupping his face tenderly, whispering.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry, sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, **Red.** Sorry, I'm sorry. **Red**_**, believe me, won't you?**_ I am so sorry. Sorry..."

Yukimura cannot hear it anymore, because he has already heard it. The pain in Masamune's eyes has never changed and he finally knows why. The memory is faint and blurry in parts but he sees now, their last day together, their last _fight_ together, overlaid with Masamune's hurting eye and crying face and desperate apologies. Yukimura wishes he would stop, because seeing Masamune like this is worse pain than the metal of the sword that has sliced his belly open. He tries to tell Masamune that it does not matter, that there is always rebirth and new lives and even if there isn't, he forgives him.

He doesn't really, but he says it with all his heart because he knows that Masamune will destroy himself with guilt otherwise, and he hopes it will work.

_It seems as if it did not_, a dry voice in his head speaks. A part of Yukimura now is glad about what he has just done to Masamune and thinks of it as revenge. Not for accidentally gutting him five hundred years ago, but for never giving Yukimura the chance to remember and forgive and rediscover their love in this new lifetime. Masamune has chosen guilt at Yukimura's death over Yukimura _himself_, and the once-samurai cannot stand to think that his memory has been of more significance to this man than his living flesh and feelings.

He pushes Masamune away, forces him outside to the balcony and the fresh air.

"..sorry, I'm sorry, **Red**. So sorry..."

Yukimura is done with the guilt and the apologies. He is done with Masamune, but he decides that he would like to give him a farewell gift.

"Masamune-dono."

"**Red**...I..."

"If I forgive you, Masamune-dono, will you stop? Will you _live_?" Yukimura's eyes are burning with tears and repugnance over it all, over what Masamune is and what he has been forced to become because of Masamune, but he has to say it.

"Yes," whispers Masamune, reaching for Yukimura.

_At last_, Yukimura thinks, even if neither of them has the right to this anymore. He reaches out, brushes Masamune's mangled, filthy mouth with his fingers. It is cool and peaceful outside. From the garden thirteen floors below them the scent of night flowers drifts up like a fleeing glimpse of another life. Yukimura takes it all in with a smile.

Then he jumps.

* * *

><p><strong>Please review, and don't forget to read <strong>Loved **by **lyrainthedark**!**


	6. For Worse, for Better

**Disclaimer: I don't own Sengoku Basara or its characters.**

**A/N: Sixth in the **Loved/Beloved **series****. You know where to find **Loved**!**

**Prompt: **Hours

**Premise: **Either Yukimura or Masamune is married; what are the consequences?

* * *

><p>The pleasure that is pain, is also a fire in his veins. He calls it Masamune.<p>

That word, the name of that emotion – it is a mix of many, a name with no home.

It brings him sensations each night, each stolen dawn; the sensations are not emotion, but a tutelage.

He learns to love, love in more ways than one, love in more ways than a man. There is no one more responsible for this state of affairs than Masamune – his rival and equal – with his arsenal of pleasure and adoration.

He, he _himself_, has neither offered nor volunteered anything.

In retrospect, it was heartbreaking.

Today, it is a part of every thought he has. It is a part of society and of life itself – the better you were at it, the better people thought of you. But today, he has no need to be _better._ Today, he recognises the urgency and want in Masamune's eyes, and takes it for his own without question.

This much, these few hours, Yukimura can squander upon Masamune.

This much, he knows he _must,_ because it is the last time, the only real time they have left till tomorrow comes.

Tomorrow, Yukimura is getting married.

* * *

><p>"Please don't."<p>

The words are simple – they are an echo of the pleas he has made himself, but in quite a different context. When these forbidden words passed his lips, Yukimura was bound to the bed, spread-eagled and erect and throbbing with need. He had not seen any shame in begging for attention, for affection then.

So why, he wonders, do these words now seem to him like the brand of a hot iron best left to drown?

* * *

><p>Yukimura is not marrying for love. Indeed, he can muster up some semblance of desire for the woman he takes to his bed every night, but the voice he hears, the face he sees and the clenching tightness he feels are not hers.<p>

Those have always belonged to the man called Date Masamune.

Yukimura thinks it is not seemly to think of his lover when he is bedding his wife. He closes his eyes, kisses Masamune once on the lips, and then achieves orgasm with frightening precision.

When he cries out in release, the face he can see is female; it is his wife.

* * *

><p>Masamune...what does he see?<p>

It is something that often bothers Yukimura. When he looks at his family – pudgy little sons and daughters, a pleasantly curved woman tending to them and shooting him shy smiles at intervals, he wonders what Masamune sees.

H e can never know, but what he imagines is no less accurate – or so he believes. Masamune would hate them. Masamune was fiercely possessive, Yukimura knew that. The nights when Masamune came to his door, his windows and his roof, stealthy and beggarly, were frequent. Yet, Yukimura had not shied away from his duty – he owed the Takeda line a suitable heir and he had got it.

Masamune?

Yukimura did not know anymore.

_Masamune_, he wonders, briefly, distractedly. _Where...what are you doing, Masamune?_

Yukimura rejects the yearning in the question and retains only the lack of true response.

_I shall try again_, he vows, and neglects to appoint a specific time and place.

* * *

><p>When the news reaches Yukimura, it is a wee bit too late. He manages to get gifts for his growing brood of children, but not quite for his wife.<p>

_Blue silk yukata_, is what he wants to buy for her. Blue silk, a blue eye, blue electricity crackling against his fire, are what he sees, and thusly forgets that he even has a woman waiting for him at home.

All he can be bothered to think about, for these valued moments, is Masamune.

Masamune who had loved him.

Masamune who had taught him pleasure,

Masamune who had swallowed him.

Masamune who was him.

Masamune, who had killed himself at last, because he could not have him.

And all Yukimura knows, all he feels, is relief.

* * *

><p><strong>Please review, and don't forget to read <strong>Loved **by **lyrainthedark**!**


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